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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

34. The Puerto Ricans Who Lobbied for Independence, With the Pen and With the Sword

Pedro Albizu Campos (1893-1965), Puerto Rican nationalist, raising his hat to a crowd as he is arrested following the deadly shooting of a policeman by two nationalists. Albizu would serve the next ten years in United States jails. Walmart

In 1922, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PRNP) was formed, to lobby for independence by both the pen and sword. Decades later, the pen had not brought about independence. So frustrated PRNP activists, led by the party’s charismatic leader, the Harvard-educated Pedro Albizu Campos, came to favor the sword.

On October 30^th, a series of coordinated armed attacks struck American targets in six Puerto Rican towns. The uprising was swiftly crushed by a strong military response, that included the use of planes. President Harry S. Truman described the event as “an incident between Puerto Ricans“. That further upset PRNP activists. To draw attention to the cause of independence – and make a point that what had happened was a rebellion and act of war between two countries – they drew plans for the assassination of Truman.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.